Compatibility requirements

The Web Service does not require any specific language or SOAP implementation for client development, but Java™ and the Apache Axis SOAP Toolkit are required to compile and run the examples included in Installing web services SDK examples. For more information on using Axis for web service development please refer to the Apache Axis web site at http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/.

To increase compatibility with the WS-I compliance test and Microsoft .NET 2.0, version 10.1 of the Web Service creates SOAP documents that are created are in the RPC/Literal binding without multi-refs. Version 6.1 used RPC/encoded without multi-refs; versions earlier than 6.1 used RPC/encoded with multi-refs.

While the examples use Java and Axis, in theory, your clients can use what ever language or soap implementation that you choose. As long as they are SOAP 1.2 compliant and the following simple Java data types can be converted to the native language: String, boolean, byte, short, int, long, float, and double. For example, the Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework is compatible with these types.

Another compatibility requirement is that the client does not require the XML response to be in the exact order defined in the WSDL. The Initiate® WSDL uses inheritance (<extension base>). The Apache AXIS engine does not produce replies that are in the order of inheritance in the WSDL's response definitions. The fact that the <extension base> comes grouped together with the rest of the elements for a given complexType may cause some clients to throw parsing exceptions. It is unclear whether this issue is an error in Apache AXIS or with the other consuming implementations. Microsoft .NET 2.0 and Apache AXIS itself have no issues with consuming this type of WSDL.